Welcome and Seasonal Marketing Lull

Speaker 1 0:21

Hey everyone , welcome back to Marketing Qualified . I'm Mike Griffin and I'm Chris Newman . Chris , you said something to me before hopping on that I want to put out for the audience to agree or disagree with . This is just like an awkward time of the year where there's not like a ton happening on happening on happening in the world with respect to like sports , entertainment , etc . You want to ? You want to double down on that ? You want to elaborate a little bit ?

Speaker 2 0:52

yeah , I mean , uh , just for everyone's understanding , we're recording this on february 27th . Uh , by the time it gets published it's probably going to be june , so this might not be relevant anymore . But honestly , like the , the time it gets published it's probably going to be June , so this might not be relevant anymore . But honestly , like the , the time period between , like I'd say like maybe even right after the holidays or definitely , you know , after the super bowl , you know early February , when the , when football season's over , there's just nothing between now and like April or May . I mean , I guess , like if I was bigger into basketball , like you know , I like watching the playoffs and the championship and all that kind of stuff , but I don't really follow the season that much during the regular season .

Speaker 2 1:30

I'm not a March madness guy . I just feel like there's not really anything interesting going on right now other than Trump and Doge just completely dismantling the government . But yeah , I mean honestly , like Mike and I were just really struggling on what the fuck we're even going to talk about on today's podcast , we're like , do we just , you know , punt this and record next week ? And I'm like , you know , let's just go with it . Yeah , let's just go with it .

Speaker 1 1:52

I confess I followed the Celtics as closely as one can without having cable Like we've talked about in the past . I just got rid of that years ago . I was one of the original like cord cutter type of folks but follow pretty closely just like their social channels and youtube highlights . You can get pretty good like sense of what's going on there . I know that like the oscars are coming up maybe they've happened already . I'm not like super tuned in to that kind of thing and then the only thing that occurs to me now is that you might lose a couple of boston credential points here by not mentioning saint . Patrick's day is on the horizon , so I don't know , are we , are we too old to celebrate that at this point ?

Speaker 2 2:31

or what does one do ? I think it depends on the manner of celebration . So I mean , if you take it off from work and you go out at like nine o'clock in the morning just to get completely obliterated , we might be a little bit too old for that , but you know , I , I enjoy a good uh , I don't even know the politically correct term for it , but I enjoy a good irish car bomb . Uh , on saint patty's day , you know , have a couple , have a couple guinness , you know some jameson , all the , all the good stuff . I don't know if we've talked about this .

Speaker 1 2:57

Have you watched peaky blinders ?

Speaker 1 3:01

I have not no okay , I don't know if this is like your genre , but it's basically like an English gang early like post World War I , before World War II , kind of thing , and it's fucking dope . It's like super violent but it's very good like character building , a lot of good quality stuff . Anyhow , I enjoy having a Guinness as I'm watching that . It feels like very much like I'm tapped into the process . The only thing that would make it more authentic is they drink a lot of Irish whiskey . I do not currently possess any Irish whiskey . I have many iterations of American bourbon and scotch and even randomly some vodka that's lying around , but I don't have any like Irish specific whiskey . I went through a super Jameson Black Barrel phase when I was immediately post-grad from college , but I haven't really come around Somewhere . Joe Del Vene is just rolling in his grave because he used to just feed me Irish whiskey before we'd go and do our HubSpot dodgeball team games back in the day .

Speaker 2 3:59

So forgive me , joe , but yeah . He's not going to be thrilled about that one .

Speaker 1 4:04

No , no , there's an angry fish shake happening , some kind of mild insult , beefcake being used .

Speaker 2 4:11

description what's , what's your ? Uh , your go-to bourbon right now right now it's actually just scotch .

Speaker 1 4:18

We still have some decent like mccallan that's lying around . It was , I think it's the gold cask , that aged 15 years kind of thing . And this is not like a casual tuesday beverage , right like the end of it at the end of a week when maybe heaven forbid I've been like productive and have some dopamine in me . I enjoy a little splash and uh and some enjoyment there .

Speaker 1 4:36

So nice yeah , piggy blinders plug , scotch plug . Uh , what else do we have ? Uh , I guess like someone with a celtics plug and just like a total transport to transparent take on , when this thing will actually be out into the ether . What did we miss ?

Speaker 2 4:55

uh , we should . We should take a bet on when when this is actually going to get published . So I I know that I'm behind on reviewing one of the uh the recordings that you already edited . I need to edit the next one as well . I think we're probably four episodes in the backlog right now that we recorded , but we just haven't edited and put out there yet . So , yeah , that's definitely a little bit of a struggle , Right right .

Speaker 1 5:20

Great segue . Speaking of a little bit of a struggle , you had something you wanted to talk about and it was with respect to AI . Now , we had an experience with AI in our last recording . That did not go exactly how you drew it up , but I think the question that you pose is just kind of like in general is AI making us dumber

Is AI Making Us Dumber?

Speaker 1 5:42

? Ai making us dumber , that's right .

Speaker 2 5:45

So I mean , like I was saying , you and I were struggling to figure out what we actually want to talk about today , on today's call . There's not really a lot going on in the world . I know that you just started a new job recently , full-time , so you're probably not super salty yet . You're enjoying yourself and your coworkers and everything at this point , whereas I'm starting my own new business and you know I don't really have anything that's making me salty either . So you know I don't really . I don't have anyone working in the business , I'm just building the product at this point .

Speaker 2 6:14

So I don't have anything to gripe on from that perspective and just when you know , chatting through with you , what we actually want to talk about on today's episode , my first inclination was to go to ChatGPT . Hey , generate 10 topics for a marketing podcast . And the fact that that was my first inclination just makes me think like , wow , am I really that fucking dumb I can't think of anything worthwhile to talk about on this podcast that I need to go to this AI , which is arguably dumber than most people it doesn't have . Like you know , I forget the term AI , which is arguably dumber than most people it doesn't have . I forget the term , the AGI , the true intelligence , or anything . It pretty much is just a dumb AI model . I don't know if that says more about me or more about the AI , I wonder .

Speaker 1 7:04

Obligatory and super eye-rolling statement at this point about ai . It's like well , it depends on the quality of the prompt , doesn't it ? How good the fucking thing is . And you can find a thousand one like prompt templates that are out there right now , so there is some validity to that . Yeah , oh yeah , take a look , take a look , yeah I like what you see on on linkedin .

Speaker 2 7:24

Hey , go ahead and comment . If you want my best top prompt templates , okay , and then you , and then this . This is probably going to trigger you a little bit , but , uh , yeah , comment on my linkedin post to boost my reach so that I'll give you this thing which I most likely am not going to ever give you if I have it in the first , like I have reason to believe this happened .

Speaker 1 7:46

You're fucking right , this did trigger me . Thank you so much . We got to get some kind of like sound effect right that comes in during the audio recording . It's like a trigger alert , like something like siren kind of thing . This is a very recent experience that I had and like okay . So first there was a little bit of an obligatory feeling to engage with this person's post in the first place , because my current boss sent a post that they had on LinkedIn . That , to be fair , does tee the promised resource up to be quite helpful and actually somewhat pertinent to my day to day . Like cool , I will check out this post . It was one of those situations , exactly as you described it , where here's this great framework for something .

Speaker 2 8:28

Just to interject . Would you have done this if your boss did not send you this post ? If you would have found it ? Because you're kind of in a dilemma . You're like well , if I don't comment , my boss is going to see I

LinkedIn Engagement Frustrations

Speaker 2 8:37

didn't comment , then he's going to think I don't care about my job , but if I do , then I'm boosting this fucking guy's reach and he's not going to send a fucking resource anyways . This is a great catch-22 .

Speaker 1 8:48

To answer your question . I don't think so . I've done that exactly once before and got to be fair to this person . It was actually a somewhat helpful thing . I've seen countless other opportunities to do so and have declined to do it for each everyone . So probably not had I not been prompted to by my current boss . So the other thing here is that it is a company , is the CEO of a company that my new gig actually uses , in an admittedly like limited capacity , but nonetheless . So there's all this like pressure to go and engage with this . So anyway , I fucking comment what's supposed to happen is that shortly thereafter , I received this promised and quite hyped up resource via a LinkedIn direct message . What happened instead was a connect request , which I accept and have not yet seen any resource come through . And it begs the question were they in fact just looking to boost their own whatever strength , personal brand engagement level , or do they , as promised in their fucking post , have something helpful to share that is now just being withheld right ?

Speaker 2 10:17

it's upsetting ? Or or is it also like I know that you said that your company's already using these guys , but is it also like a lead gen tactic for them as well ? Like that way , you know they , you comment that your company is already using these guys , but is it also like a lead gen tactic for them as well ? Like that way , you know they , you comment , they connect with you , which is like an extra thing , is like oh , he's connecting with me . You know they're probably going to send me the resource I wanted , but then they use that to pitch you and , you know , send you a LinkedIn message . That doesn't cost them any money because you're now a connection . They don't have to use email there's .

Speaker 1 10:44

I mean , that would make a lot of sense to me . Word lead gen tactic right , that would make a ton of sense to me , actually which , by the way , I'm empathetic to because , like you and I have talked about this in the past but , like , increasingly social platforms are rewarding organic posts that come from individuals over company pages , that are thought leadership in nature , that do not include links to other things . Right , the best thing you can do right now is post on linkedin , for example , an embedded video or some type of graphic right that doesn't lead people back to the website that was the playbook of yesteryear . Now you're very unlikely to be seen without spending some money on a type of post that does that . So I'm empathetic to getting creative and I don't hate the comment for this resource thing as a marketing tactic , but it makes it a shitty marketing tactic when there's no follow through , and that's what grinds my gears .

Speaker 2 11:37

Yeah , classic bait and switch Classic bait and switch . This is reason number 1975 as to why I fucking hate LinkedIn .

Speaker 1 11:47

That's a . It's a high ticker .

Speaker 2 11:49

On next week's episode , reason number 1976 .

Speaker 1 11:53

It's an easy thing to hate , I have to say it really is . It really is One thing that again , going back to just social channels and what you have to do to actually get any traction on there I know that when we last spoke , we talked about just this , this request that I've been fielding from folks internally to ensure that they were not seeing ads for our company on their own feeds . You and I did math , whatever just to follow up on that conversation and

Social Media Marketing Costs

Speaker 1 12:27

took a closer look at what it was on meta , so Instagram and Facebook costing my current company to serve ads to current employees . It's actually about 45 cents for each impression that a employee saw there and your immediate reaction was what ?

Speaker 2 12:47

that's way too fucking high . That's .

Speaker 1 12:49

That's a lot of money for one impression really high right , and I believe you followed up with something to the tune of that's . You got to yank that campaign , right it's yeah , it's a 450 cpn really expensive it's crazy , it's crazy yeah but ?

Speaker 1 13:05

but that campaign and I'll call out Instagram specifically as the culprit here is actually generating a healthy amount of leads that are coming through for this campaign . Just to give full context , the nature of the campaign is not like a native lead gen form . Right , it's a piece of creative . You click through and you essentially sign up for it . It's a very low lift form to complete . It's basically you're joining a wait list , so at first you enter your email , You're on the wait list . At that point you can provide some additional information . To like equip a potential person to reach out to you about the product itself is interesting , so on and so forth .

Speaker 1 13:50

But Instagram first of all surprised me as a channel that's being somewhat effective for us . I would not have assumed so , given what I know about my company's current persona . Maybe there's opportunity to revamp what we believe to be true about these personas based on the data that we're getting back from this . But the other thing is that it's how to put this . Obviously we would like to pay less for this kind of thing , but you have to look at the actual ACV of the product that's being generated and it's a lot fucking higher than what it costs to acquire a lead right now on Instagram . The payback period actually looks somewhat healthy for this as well , and I don't want to get into too many specifics for fear of getting into legal trouble here .

Speaker 1 14:27

But this all surprised me a lot , and the main point that I want to make is that we shouldn't make assumptions about what is and is not going to work based on the person who's like try it . I think that every growth market , every demand person , should have some bit of incrementality testing budget , and I'll give you another example . I'm about to onboard someone that I worked with at a previous gig for SEO and PPC efforts , and one of the biggest things that he's put together in his playbook for us and building out our own authority is Reddit . Reddit's like a big part of the organic search . What do you call it ? Like overall SEO authority play , and it makes a lot of sense why I think you're a Redditor . Aren't you using this platform ?

Speaker 2 15:09

I don't really post at all , but I do like browse it a lot , like I go to it quite a bit .

Speaker 1 15:15

And remind me you are quicker to go to chat GPT first for a query these days ? Or are you going to Google looking at that AI and then like , if you don't find what you like there , you're going at a chat gpt to punch something in ?

Speaker 2 15:29

um , I'd say I think it depends on what I'm looking for . If I'm doing some development , coding and everything , I 100% use ChatGPT almost exclusively , whereas in the past I would Google something and then find stats overflow or try to find some outdated blog posts talking about something that isn't even relevant anymore . So ChatGPT is definitely more helpful in that kind of stuff . If it's yeah , I mean if it's more just like advice and just like the kind of thing that people talk about on Reddit , then I'll go to Google and just like always include like Reddit at the end of the question , Right ?

Speaker 1 16:05

Interesting . Let's talk about our use cases . So the main point I was gonna make there is like , were you to go to Google and you punch in something , especially like a , I don't know , like a non-branded query , but increasingly there's like a comparison Reddit subreddits I hope I'm using the right vernacular here that go into this kind of thing . Reddit's probably popping up as one of , like , the top links , and you think about why that's possible , right ? All the backlinks , all the juice that comes from , like a backlink to an SEO platform , right . If you can't get that to propel your own domain to the top of the SERP , then you might as well show up where what is ranking higher , and that is Reddit , and so if you have a concerted effort to build out content there , then it's kind of a two birds , one stone type of situation as far as I'm concerned , and that makes a lot of sense . So I'm like very enthusiastically championing that as a motion for us as we're trying to scale up what is honestly kind of a bare bones SEO presence at the moment .

Speaker 1 17:05

So that was the point I wanted to make about , like Reddit , anything else before we go into chat . Gpt usage .

Speaker 2 17:10

I mean , I do have mixed feelings on that kind of stuff because , yeah , reddit does come up a lot in Google but at the same time , like I'm I'm very much cognizant of like whatever possible I want traffic coming to my website . Like I don't want to be either paying or , you know , doing SEO to help somebody else's website Because , especially like I think that Google is realizing they that they over indexed on Reddit a little bit too much in the past year in terms of SEO and it started to actually shift back the other way . Like for a while I would Google anything and like Reddit would be one of the top results , and I think that that's slowly going to start changing to be a little bit more balanced . So , like my , my concern with that strategy is like , if you do too much SEO work specifically on Reddit , you don't have the ability to cookie somebody if they're not coming to your site . Retargeting isn't really as prevalent as it used to be , but you can't retarget somebody off that . You don't have any analytics beyond what Reddit offers you .

Speaker 2 18:07

Reddit also mentioned that they're going towards more of a paywall model . So that's a huge red flag to me is if they start gating a lot of this content and like doing more of a paywall , because they're a public company . Now you know they have to try to to make their shareholders happy , so it is putting a lot of like , and it's not just right , you know , I I feel the same way about like putting too much of your effort on social , on linkedin , facebook , instagram , like all this other stuff . Whenever possible , I like to try to put a lot of effort towards things that we control . So like the website , your own domains , like things that are directly under your control that you can . You know your email list is a great one like all that type of stuff .

Speaker 1 18:45

Yeah , I was gonna say let's talk about that then . Right , so if you're increasingly being incentivized , as we're talking about , to stay within the social platform , so even like the backlink and traffic and like retargeting play that you mentioned is becoming less viable , what do you lean into ? You lend your first party type information that you can get via your site , via your email list . Uh , okay , so if we're , if we're running under the assumption then they're like okay , so we have dedicated resources we're putting to building out a reddit presence , a linkedin presence . We'll pick on those two channels again . Uh , there's an argument to be made that

SEO Strategy and Reddit's Role

Speaker 1 19:21

the brand building there , even if you're not back linking right , we should see a result , an uptick in either organic search that people are like googling you after they have some brand branded search .

Speaker 1 19:33

Yeah , exactly , or in some instances maybe even like direct traffic , like maybe they're just going right to like company namecom right , but what should the setup be when they arrive there ? Like how do you think about actually building out your email database ? Are you putting something as straightforward as like a newsletter sign up in the hero image , for example ? Are you relying on a like more high intent conversion , like a demo opportunity ? Like how are you popular to try to solve for people that are coming in via those channels ? Specifically , what's your take on ?

Speaker 2 20:12

that .

Speaker 2 20:13

I mean I guess a lot of it depends on what the goal is that you have for the site .

Speaker 2 20:17

So I mean , ideally every site should have a primary conversion and a secondary conversion maybe like a tertiary one , like a newsletter signup or something . But a primary one will usually always at least for B2B staff it'll almost always be a demo request or a freemium or free trial signup or something like that . So yeah , I mean a lot of it just depends on the goal because , like , if you're building the awareness on reddit and linkedin and everything , then ideally people have enough of a reason to come to your website off of what they saw on that , so it should be related to that . So I mean , if you're promising like a resource or something on these platforms , then you should make the resource prevalent on the site , no matter where they land , whether it's a dedicated landing page or the homepage or whatever . If you're trying to get a freemium signup if that's what you're talking about on the platform , then you should make it as easy as possible for them to take that action once they get to your site .

Speaker 1 21:06

Agreed , and I realize there are two different things to consider there . One of them is just a no-click post , no backlink post on one of these platforms that does the brand building , that builds the familiarity , and then these people arrive on the page because they were enticed to do so based on what they saw . Then there are instances where you can include a link to a site . Maybe it's just like a boilerplate that you're putting at the bottom of the page and I believe . Correct me if I'm wrong here , but , like hubspot mutiny , some of these other platforms have the ability to personalize the content that you see upon arriving on the page based on the referring source . Does that sound right ? Yeah ?

Speaker 2 21:59

yeah , I don't know . I don't know the specifics of those tools . I've never used mutiny , but , um , I know that there are tools out there that can do what you're describing what do you think is ?

Speaker 1 22:08

the right move there . Right , because it's , as far as I understand it , it's not like you can get as specific as like passing along UTM values , like , oh , chris clicked through on this particular post so , as a result of that , show him this very related piece of content that we were talking about on whatever the post was . I could be mistaken there , but let's run for a moment under the assumption that you can't do that . We can get as specific as chris clicked through from facebook . What would you put like what is the like you can do this and it's a cool piece of functionality I'm thinking about like strategically , what would you present as personalized content , just based ?

Speaker 1 22:50

on the medium through which someone came to you .

Speaker 2 22:53

Yeah , I mean , if it's just the , the channel or the medium that they came to you . Yeah , I mean , if it's just the channel or the medium that they came from , you don't really have much to go on . I mean , if you only have one post on Reddit , then it's easy to assume that that's where they came from . But if you have an entire strategy with multiple dozens of posts and everything , then I mean I don't know what Reddit lets you post for links and stuff . But I mean I don't know what Reddit lets you post for links and stuff , but I don't see any reason why you couldn't use some kind of UTM so you know specifically what posts are coming from .

Speaker 2 23:19

You might even be able to see what posts are coming from . I mean , you can definitely see the referring domain . You might even be able to see the referring page . I don't remember if that's something that's in there . Yeah , interesting .

Speaker 1 23:30

I'll let you know . I actually just finished signing a HubSpot contract for my new gig just yesterday . So yeah , I guess what was that sales process ? Like it says the 27th of February , I think we started it in like mid-January .

Speaker 1 23:48

So not terrible in terms of turnaround . Wait , was your oh wow , because it was fast or because you thought it was slow . No , I was going to say like you already kind of knew that you wanted to buy it though , right , so why did it take so long ? Uh , okay , well , it's a fair . It's a

HubSpot Implementation Challenges

Speaker 1 24:06

fair question . A lot of it was basically when I think maybe we should talk about it made this be helpful for people .

Speaker 1 24:11

So , like I stepped into a , a startup environment that had a kind of like a classic hubspot , marketo , whatever use case , and that is just like a lot of disparate software is being franken signed together to try to paint a picture of what was going on , and like thing a wasn't talking to thing b , just kind of a fucking mess , right , a black box was basically the state of existence for data and anything that was like above a demo request for conversion , like places in the funnel . So , despite that , the Frankenstein nature , so like the tech ecosystem , is still in my opinion . I don't mind being on record saying this is like it's bloated , right , there's a lot of like duplicate stuff , there's a lot of stuff we're leveraging and that kind of thing , and so a of it was actually I think I was the blocker in terms of being able to systematically go through and say we have this , here's the downfalls , here's why hubspot makes more sense to do and like paint that picture . I also think that I was um overly accommodating to a listen again like I'm deeply empathetic to processes , to milestones , checkpoints , all that kind of stuff that , like a salesperson's manager is telling them that they have to go through . Like I got an email from our rep recently that's like you don't have to do anything with this , you don't have to look at it , basically . But like I'm required to put together this like mutual action plan , I think they're calling it or like the state of the partnership , or like how to move forward . Empathetic to all that .

Speaker 1 25:39

I think I was overly accommodating in terms of like bringing other marketing team members on board for like demos and not being prescriptive enough out of the first couple of those . When it comes to like we only need to see this functionality . Like we don't need to spend time on like the bells and whistles . Like it's enough for us that there's going to be a social media scheduling calendar instead of having to go into each individual platform and like spin up UTM from there , blah , blah , blah , blah blah , but I actually think that I was blocking and the lesson that I would recommend for everyone is to put together a document . Hey , comment on this show note and I'll send you a link to the template I put together and it's just like the exec summary . So , like , what have we been spending on tech stack so far ? What is HubSpot going to cost us ? What are the difference ? And I do recommend not focusing just on like monetary costs , but on like resources . Example product marketer on my team was using SendGrid . Have you used Send grid before ?

Speaker 2 26:36

um , briefly , yeah for uh like , for like a web , okay , not for like marketing I haven't used either .

Speaker 1 26:43

So what I'm about to say is based exclusively on what was communicated to me . I don't even have like a seat to our send grid instance , okay , but what was communicated to me was like it eliminates performance data after I think it's like some 10 days . It's like very quick . You do not get to see like individual recipient performance . You get an aggregate view of X number of opens and Y number of clicks , and here's the aggregate like click-through rate , but you don't get to see like Chris clicked on this link or Mike clicked this link or whatever else the case was . So it makes it very hard to determine like connect the dots of unless you're using UTMs very methodically , which has been kind of a pain in the ass to do Like wouldn't have to , won't have to .

Speaker 1 27:25

So I'm moving forward . It's like what email did they click on ? What link did they come from ? Who did it ? Did they go on to do the conversion action that took place ? And like just kind of like spelling all that out in a non-marketing oriented person verbiage was like challenging in a lot of instances right , because you just can't help but get in the weeds with some of this stuff , and it was a good like learning for me . So , exact summary talk about what you need , why you need it , talk about the challenge and the resources it'll put back into other people's plates and like I'm happy as shit now that it's going to take like minutes to spin something up . Uh , that would have taken literally more than 90 minutes in the past .

Speaker 2 28:05

So that's what were we talking about uh , you were talking about how you were a huge blocker in the HubSpot sales process .

Speaker 1 28:14

That's right . Yeah , my condolences to our rep , the old red tape Anyway .

Speaker 2 28:22

Yeah , I think we talked about this on a previous episode when I bought some software in my previous role , how the sales rep was more of a blocker than I had used the tool in the past multiple times and I just wanted to buy the software and like they fit you into or you know , they fit me into this very like predetermined sales process . Like didn't listen to anything that I had to say . I'm literally like waving cash in their face . I'm like I want to buy this and they're like no , no , no , Let us go back to stages and make sure that we get you qualified .

Speaker 1 28:57

Like I don't know what's more qualified than , uh , me waving a bunch of cash in your face , saying take my fucking money and , by the way , even if you're not qualified , based on whatever firmographic like criteria they have , like they should take your money right like I don't . I don't know , that's not entirely true , that's not . You want to solve for like launch rally , get like wanting to make sure that you're going to be like a good fit , but if you are based on an initial assessment and it sounds like they could glean that from your conversations and you're like hey , checks in hand , ready to cut it to you , then it should take far less time . Yeah , I don't know , maybe that's a radical idea . What do we know ? We're in marketing . What do we know ? Yeah , uh , jesus christ man , what a fucking , what a journey .

Speaker 1 29:42

Uh , okay , we were fucking around trying to figure out what we're going to talk about . I guess we found something . I guess you came , we've got a trigger . We've had chat about whatever else . What uh are there ? Are there headlines that you have is Is this what this is ?

Speaker 2 29:56

No , I wasn't able to find any good headlines . The rest of these are just different trends and topic ideas that ChatGPT spit out . Are any good ?

Speaker 1 30:09

Put ChatGPT on the spot .

Speaker 2 30:13

I mean , a couple of them are good . I like the rise of micro- , rise of micro influencers and why they're outperforming , outperforming celebs , um is .

Speaker 1 30:22

Do you think , possibly because of the authenticity thing that we always talk about and these micro influencers might know what the fuck they're talking about ? And the celebrity who's clearly just like all these guys gave me a check with a lot of zeros on it . So I'll say whatever it is , the whatever it is that I need to yeah , I .

Speaker 2 30:36

I think that's interesting because , I mean , obviously a lot of micro influencers are full of shit too and they just like kind of , you know , if somebody's going to pay them to say something , they'll say it . But for whatever reason , gen z just tends to believe them more than , like a , a celebrity , whereas like boomers , tend to believe more celebrities . I think I don't know , I might be , I might be generalizing there , but um , here's a question for you based on that they came across recently .

Speaker 1 31:01

This is like part of my new vendor vetting process at work . I'm connecting with a founder of basically a b2b influencer platform and the idea is they will connect you with people who theoretically know what the fuck they're talking about within their space , perhaps like accumulated a following of sorts , and you work with them much like you would a user-generated content for like a playbio customer , right , if you're like a d2c ecom brand , you want to do like a seeding campaign or you want to have , yeah , like a classic influencer marketing campaign for like your product unboxing get ready with me that kind of thing , but through like a b2b lens . I'm assuming that involves like linkedin posting . I'm sure it involves like potential , like community partnerships and what have you , but it's a platform to connect b2b brands with influencers or people that , yeah , are thought leaders or whatever in their space . What is your immediate reaction to that ? Like motion or like the trend of b to the b , to cification , of b to b ?

Speaker 2 32:03

I don't know , I just I . I know we talk about linkedin probably a little bit too much on this show and I just feel like for every good piece of advice you get on linkedin from a quote-unquote2B influencer , there's a hundred others that are just full of shit . So , like that's , my first inclination is like , how are they actually vetting these people ? Are they like and like ? What's the criteria for like somebody who's like a B2B influencer versus somebody who just posts on LinkedIn a lot , you know ?

Speaker 1 32:30

Yep Like is it ?

Speaker 2 32:31

is it following count Cause like , like is it is it following count because like is it like title , like you know .

Speaker 1 32:39

Number of years of experience it's , it's just all very subjective I think that's fair .

Speaker 2 32:44

Um , yeah , I mean the my , my first thing , my my . When you were talking about , like you know , celebs versus influencers and stuff , my first thought was , like cameo and like how you can pay a celeb on cameo to say whatever you want to whoever you want and they'll do it . Yeah , what if there's a b2b version of that , like , hey , this is naomi , vp of marketing at lumindus . I heard it's your birthday , mike , god congratulations , happy birthday . I hope you have a great marketing centric birthday marketing centric birthday .

Speaker 1 33:15

I want you to describe for me what a marketing center .

Speaker 2 33:18

I think that's a thing that you know . There there's your next business . I do . I do do like a B2B version of a cameo . It's like you're . You're like a you know , a big HubSpot customer . You get Brian Halligan on there to send you a happy birthday note or something so interesting .

Speaker 1 33:33

Yeah , yeah , forget about these classic abm campaigns where you might get like a bottle of wine or like lunch and you , I want a personalized video read to me , I want to be sung to by the ceo of this place . They haven't given me my fucking resource . Yeah , keep the resource . Give me a song . What is ? Yeah , see , look at this place that is doing the b2b connection . I just like , googled what their uh , what do you call it their , their , their brand name is and got nothing that looks like a corporate b2b site . So there's an seo challenge for them , I guess . Yeah , what shows up instead , you might be wondering a hotel , a clothing brand , several google maps results , a generic wikipedia article , what this is ? Uh , let's see what is it . Yeah , they're seriously not kind of crazy . Oh , that's a challenge . That is a challenge , okay , well , okay , speaking of challenge , one thing I did want to pick your brain on .

Speaker 1 34:33

So the greater people in here , the mastermind think out loud is kind of a UX question or UI . I always get those two mixed . It's kind of like a demand capture question . And so imagine , if you will , that you have landed on this solutions page . We'll call it Think classic solutions page on a website , in the hero section .

Speaker 1 34:53

You , chrisris , are in charge of making the following determination

B2B Influencer Marketing Trends

Speaker 1 34:57

do I want to use a call to action button that does not transfer someone to another page like it used to like a dedicated landing page , right but instead brings them down via anchor link to the bottom of the solutions page , which is is somewhat meaty and there is the full web capture form with , like the fields that you would expect to do ? You can , you can do that . Or , alternatively , you can use that hero space image to have a form that exists , but it's not a landing page , right , it's a full solution page , right , so it's like text on the left , form on the right , classically out there . Or your third option is to and this is like a product led kind of company , so a freemium trial you can have the call to action button lead directly to whatever that like onboard page is . Usually it's a different domain , it's like an appwhatevercom . What are you recommending the team does in that instance ?

Speaker 2 36:06

Sorry , can you go back to the first part of it ? How is the person getting to the page again ? It's just like a solutions page and they're just on the site and they happen to navigate to the solutions page .

Speaker 1 36:14

Correct's , just like a solutions page and they're just on the site and they happen to navigate to the solutions page , correct . However , the solutions page may also be used in some paid ad capacity . In a paid ad capacity .

Speaker 2 36:25

Yeah , I mean , if they're already on the site and they navigate to the solutions page .

Speaker 2 36:28

I mean I would honestly test it first of all , like just see which you know whether dropping down with the anchor link or you know , I don't think it you could put it in the hero .

Speaker 2 36:43

I mean the hero might also be better used for having some additional context and information than having a form there . You could always like have the clicking the button like pop up a modal , so it like kind of pops up in the foreground so that that has the form on it , and then , if they submit the form , then redirect them someplace else . But yeah , it's it's hard to say . I mean , that's the kind of thing I would definitely do an AB test on to see what works best for your specific site . If cold traffic has come to the page , like from an ad or something , then I usually always recommend just doing a landing page Like you page like you could even just clone the solutions page has a lot of the same content on it , but just build out a dedicated landing page so that it's a little bit more relevant to the specific ad campaign or ad group or whatever that people actually click .

Speaker 1 37:22

It makes a ton of sense because then you can also optimize the hell for a particular like subset of keywords on the landing page , whereas the solution page you have to keep like pretty , pretty standard um in order to be indexed right ?

Speaker 2 37:38

yeah , exactly , because with with the landing page , like they're not going to get there unless they click on the ad . Like you know , theoretically you wouldn't have it like two from any place else . So you at least have that variable that you can take out of the equation . Like how do they actually get to this page , whereas if it's page on on your site like they could get there through like an search , they could get there through an ad . If you're linking an ad there , they could just type your brand domain in and navigate it to the navigation . Somebody could send them the link on Slack , check out this solution or whatever . So I try to make anything on the site a little bit more generalized and then anything else be more yeah , it makes a lot of sense .

Speaker 1 38:17

Speaking of conversion and closing , we are at the closing moment of our free zoom , as always . Thank you for for going on this journey with with chris and I . Who knows what we'll talk about next time , who knows when you'll hear this , but we appreciate , we appreciate you coming by and , uh , and appreciate you coming along very , very quickly uh over under May 1st on this episode getting published . Oh , under , under . I have faith in us .

Speaker 2 38:43

Okay , I'll take the over . I'll take the over . All right , I'll be the blocker on this episode , for sure .

Speaker 1 38:48

Take it easy , man . Thanks everybody .

Speaker 2 38:50

All right , Appreciate it . Thanks everyone . Bye .